The earth angel

America’s denial about global warming withstood devastating heat waves and hurricanes, but it couldn’t hold up under the force that is Laurie David. “She single-handedly transformed the debate this year. The question is no longer if global warming exists, but what we should do about it,” says activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Thanks to David, 48, a Hollywood producer and wife of comedian Larry David, Americans now get it. Glaciers are melting; natural disasters are rampant. Without action, life as we know it may end.

How’d she turn us all into green geeks? Media savvy and sheer will: She produced the hit documentary An Inconvenient Truth, featuring former Vice President Al Gore; she led a 500,000-person “virtual march” on Washington, D.C.; she spearheaded TBS, HBO and Fox News specials on the topic; and the woman wrote a book, Stop Global Warming: The Solution Is You! It’s all the result of more than a decade of work. After a smoggy stroll with her baby in 1994, she had an epiphany: Pollution will threaten future generations. Now she won’t rest until everyone does something to conserve. (“When we have a dinner party,” she says, “it’s a Prius parking lot outside!”) “There’s no doubt the next generation is going to ask us, ‘What did you know; when did you know it?’ ” David says. “I want to be able to look my daughters in the eye and say I did everything I could.”—Tram Kim Nguyen

The role model

Long before she was Hollywood royalty, Queen Latifah was a teen named Dana Owens, working at a New Jersey Burger King. “I cleaned those toilets like it was my own home. That’s the way I was raised,” Latifah, 36, says. What she wasn’t raised to do? Let anyone treat her poorly. When a manager was rude, “I read him the riot act and quit,” she says. “My parents taught me that sometimes the crowd goes one way and your destiny lies someplace else.”

That unshakable sense of self has defined Latifah’s powerhouse career. At age 19, her album All Hail the Queen, with its feminist anthem, “Ladies First,” had even the guys impressed: “Rap was based on being masculine,” says her friend LL Cool J. “She had to have even more skill. She had to outdo us.” Since then, she’s won a Grammy, been up for an Oscar, starred in her own sitcom and talk show, and executive-produced the $133 million-grossing movie Bringing Down the House. “When La puts her mind to something, you better step aside. Step aside and bow down,” says her friend Jada Pinkett Smith.

And 2006 is her biggest year yet. Latifah scored two big roles—in Last Holiday and Stranger Than Fiction—and got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But she says her greatest reward is knowing she has changed women’s lives: “When a woman comes up to me and says she left her abusive husband because of my song lyrics, that’s better than anything,” Latifah says. “As women, we need to protect each other.”—Laurie Sandell

The snow queen

Imagine racing 1,150 miles on a tiny sled over cracking ice and snow, in temperatures 50 degrees below zero. It’s just you, 16 dogs and some serious long underwear. Rachael Scdoris, 21, knew how punishing Alaska’s Iditarod would be but also felt she could conquer it—despite the fact that she’s legally blind. On March 16, 2006, officials believe she became the first disabled person to complete the odyssey, an astounding achievement for any athlete. “More people have climbed up Mount Everest than have finished this race,” says Iditarod spokesman Chas St. George.

Born outside Bend, Oregon, with a rare visual disorder that can’t be corrected, Scdoris is nearsighted, farsighted and color-blind, seeing only fuzzy shapes. “Let’s face it, I’m at a disadvantage,” she says. “I have to come into every race in the best shape possible.” To build world-class endurance, she lifts weights, does hundreds of squats on her moving sled and runs behind it for miles. She also trains the 90 Alaskan huskies who live in her front yard (her family runs a sled-dog business). “As soon as she could talk, she asked for her own team,” her father, Jerry Scdoris, recalls. By 16, she was the youngest-ever finisher of a 500-mile race. Iditarod officials initially balked at allowing her to enter, but with Scdoris’ insistent lobbying, they finally agreed.

“She’s got toughness, balance, attitude—she’s got it all,” says Iditarod veteran Tim Osmar, who, for safety, stays in radio contact with her from his own sled throughout the race. “But what impresses me most,” he says, “is that she has no fear.”—Lynn Harris

The style dynasty

As the creative director of Italy’s legendary Missoni fashion company, Angela Missoni, 48, is the fourth-generation female to run the family business: Her mother, Rosita, inspired by her grandmother’s textile mill, began designing women’s clothing in 1953. By the sixties the sexy zigzag knits were a revolutionary hit. So was Rosita’s attitude. To thrive in business before women’s lib, she had to be visionary and strong-willed. And when Rosita anointed Angela as her successor, she knew her daughter had inherited more than just her fashion sense. “She felt I had the strength to fight,” says Angela.

Now after a decade of Angela’s reinvention, the label—and its offshoot, M Missoni—is hotter than ever. And with a new perfume (the face of which is granddaughter and next-gen brand ambassador Margherita, 23), an incredibly popular housewares line and soon, hotels, the company is growing too. “2006 is truly a Missoni moment,” says Michael Fink, women’s fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue. “They may be the only real female dynasty in fashion. They’re not afraid to take risks to speak to new generations.” Their secret? Says Rosita, 75: “The solidity of the family. It gives you serenity; from there you find strength.” —Alexandra Marshall

Mother courage

For surviving her childhood as a sex slave, Somaly Mam is a hero. For rescuing thousands of other girls from that same fate, she’s a modern-day saint, and she’s setting an example for the world.
As an orphan in war-torn Cambodia, Mam, now in her late thirties, was sold to a brothel by the family she lived with. She was forced to have sex with as many as six men a day and saw girls get chained, caged and beaten. The defining moment of her life came when she watched an abusive pimp kill her best friend. She looked the dying girl in the eye and decided to risk her life by escaping; if she made it, she’d help others break free too.

In the years since then, South Asia’s sex-trafficking industry has only boomed. Girls as young as five are sold by their parents for just a few dollars. Mam’s rescue organization, Acting for Women in Distressing Situations (AFESIP, its acronym in French), saves girls, many of whom have HIV, from brothels in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. At her centers, Mam, whose life is under constant threat from the brothel owners, helps the girls heal physically and emotionally. It’s heartbreaking work: Often they try to go back to their pimps because freedom is so unfamiliar. “I say to them that I was like them,” says Mam, who spent three years convincing one girl to stay. “Me also, I wanted to go back.”

“Somaly Mam’s story is a model for activism in the global effort to abolish modern-day slavery. She is a clear hero in my eyes,” says Ambassador John R. Miller, director of the U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Clearly her work has worldwide impact, but Mam is most interested in whichever child needs her this moment. “All I want is to help the victims,” says the woman who never knew her own parents—or even her birth date. “I want to be a true mother for them. A mother who gives them love.”—Abigail Pesta

The model citizen

As a 1970s supermodel, Iman proved that glamour comes in every color. And in 1994, her blockbuster Iman Cosmetics and Skincare Collection, the first good makeup for women of color, made her a beauty mogul. But all that, says the mother of two (and wife of singer David Bowie), was just a warm-up: Now the 51-year-old Somali native has devoted her business savvy to the AIDS crisis in Africa, where she and her parents were once refugees. By teaming up with the nonprofit Keep a Child Alive (KCA), she’s funding lifesaving antiretroviral drugs for infected African children. “Iman would have made history as a supermodel alone,” says friend and KCA global ambassador Alicia Keys, “but she is channeling her boundless passion into an issue that needs all the visibility it can get.” The charity has had a breakthrough year. That’s largely thanks to Iman’s attention-getting “I am African” fund-raising public service announcements, featuring stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and Sarah Jessica Parker in tribal makeup. The arresting message: As descendants of Africa, the birthplace of humanity, we should all care about saving its children. “Everything in my life has brought me to this point,” Iman says. “It’s the most important work I’ve ever done.” —Susan Dominus

The believer

It’s a girl! read lapel buttons all around the room—but this was no baby shower. It was the Episcopal Church’s general convention last June, where delegates cheered the election of Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, 52, as the first female presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church. At the helm of 110 dioceses in 16 countries, Jefferts Schori is the world’s most prominent female religious leader. “Until now, this has been an all-boys club,” says retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who reportedly exclaimed, “Whoopee!” at the news of her victory.

Jefferts Schori, who is married with a grown daughter, has dedicated her nine-year tenure, which began November 1, to supporting the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, including the eradication of extreme poverty. “When people work together for the benefit of others,” she says, “they usually set aside their own differences.” She will need all her diplomatic skills to handle factions within her church: Three U.S. dioceses that oppose the ordination of women have challenged her authority, and controversy swirls around her support of gay clergy and same-sex unions. “Jesus would sit and eat with anyone,” she says, unfazed. “To me that says the church is meant to be inclusive of all humanity.”—Lynn Harris

The heroes

Whether you’re pro-war or antiwar, all Americans stand in awe of our courageous troops—202,949 of whom are women. As fighting rages on in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. servicewomen are more needed and in more danger than ever. Although technically barred from combat, women—serving as commanders, military police, pilots, medics and mechanics—are now in the line of fire just as much as men. “In previous wars, most women were never anywhere near the fighting,” says Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain who directs the Women in the Military Project at the Women’s Research & Education Institute. “But in Iraq and Afghanistan, the front line is everywhere and you can get attacked at any time.”

As of press time, 426 servicewomen have been seriously injured in those two conflicts; 67 have died. “Today our armed forces thrive because of the strength and sacrifice of women,” says Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine). “Because of them, our country is safer.”

Who are these brave soldiers who are so far away—but so much like us? Most are in their twenties and thirties; more than half are married; nearly half have children; and 14 percent of servicewomen are single moms. On paper, they’re ordinary Americans—our sisters, friends, neighbors and coworkers—but what they go through is profoundly uncommon. As fighting stretches into yet another year, thousands will again leave home for yet another dangerous tour. (Three fourths of troops now serving in Iraq have been there before.) Take Maura Sullivan, 27, a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve who served a seven-month stint at Camp Fallujah last year, and now attends grad school in Boston. “Iraq is a very dangerous place, and young Americans are doing heroic things there every day,” she says. “But if they need me to go back, that’s where I will be.” —Rebecca Webber

The patriot

In November 2004, Major Tammy Duckworth’s Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Iraq. Eleven days later, she woke up, her husband at her side. She’d lost both legs, but “I wasn’t going to let some guy with a rocket launcher ruin my life,” she says. At Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the Army National Guard pilot, now 38, plotted her future. “Four months in bed is a long time to watch politicians make bad decisions on C-SPAN,” says Maj. Duckworth. So, in the tradition of vets-turned-pols like John McCain and John Kerry, she’s running for Congress as a Democrat in Illinois. Her platform? She opposes the Iraq war and supports stem-cell research and abortion rights. Marie C. Wilson, president of the White House Project, which encourages women to run, says her chances on November 7 are good. “America requires female candidates to prove they’re tough,” Wilson says. “She has.” For Maj. Duckworth, who often shuns her wheelchair for prosthetics, strength is instinct. “My crew lived through a nightmare to get me help,” she says. “Politics can be grueling, but it’s my duty.” —Tiffany Blackstone

The equalizer

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

When tennis star Lindsay Davenport heard that the stadium complex that houses the US Open, in New York City, was being renamed after Billie Jean King this year, she shot her former coach this e-mail: “It’s about time.” King, 63, secured her place in tennis history long ago by winning 39 Grand Slams, not to mention her legendary 1973 victory over self-proclaimed male chauvinist Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes,” still the most watched tennis match ever, with 50 million viewers in the United States alone. The contest was a media circus with surprisingly profound cultural repercussions. “I’ve had grown men come up to me in tears,” says King. “They’ll say, ‘When I was 10, I saw that match and raise my daughters differently now.’ ” But it was King’s off-court accomplishments that really changed history. Galled by the low stature of women’s tennis, she demanded equal prize money by threatening boycotts, and started the Women’s Tennis Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation. She also lobbied Congress for Title IX legislation, the 1972 law that forced gender equality in school athletics and academics, producing the first generation of women who grew up playing competitive sports. “I wanted girls to feel great about themselves and their bodies,” King says. Her legacy? Proving that women can be both strong athletes and groundbreaking leaders. As her friend Jimmy Connors says, “She changed not just sports but the way women are perceived at home and in the boardroom.” Adds King with her characteristic humility, “To me, true champions lift up others.” —Ruth Davis Konigsberg

Katie Couric traded her morning-tv throne for the evening news hot seat, a risky move even some of her own close advisers weren’t sure about. So what’s the view like from above the glass ceiling? Susan Dominus gets the exclusive scoop.